If you are like most home brewers, you have a strong appreciation of fine beer, as well as an intrinsic curiosity into how it is made. Why buy a William’s Home Brewery? The quality of the final beer is only as good as the quality and freshness of the ingredients used, and quality brewing is only possible when basic brewing techniques are learned and followed. In addition, easy to use, well-designed equipment helps to make brewing a relaxing, enjoyable experience. Beer is not like wine. It is best when fresh, then deteriorates after 2 to 4 months. One of the great things about home brewing is knowing how fresh the beer is you are drinking. Unlike expensive imports and micro brews, when you brew a William’s Kit, you can drink it at its prime every time.

William’s Brewing Kits

Every Home Brewery includes a William’s Brewing Kit of your choice (as listed in the Brewery description, kit photo above may vary). Our kits are unique in that they include William’s syrup malt extracts, condensed at low temperatures for a full grain flavor, fresh flavoring and aromatic hops, yeast strains specially selected to enhance the flavor of the finished beer, priming sugar, and illustrated brew-by-number instructions. Every kit has been repeatedly test-brewed in the William’s Brewlab to achieve a perfectly balanced blend of malt and hop flavors.

Instruction & Support

In addition to the brew-by-number kit instructions and beginners Home Brewing book, every William’s Home Brewery includes Homebrewing for Beginners, a video guide which includes an easy to follow recipe for your first batch of beer ‘from scratch’. After you read the included book, watch the video, and brew a few batches, you will find that home brewing can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. To help you progress further, purchase of our brewery also gives you access to the William’s Customer Support line (either by phone or website), so you can get your brewing questions answered.

The Best Equipment

Poor quality equipment, whether it be a fermenter lacking a transfer valve designed to keep yeast out, or a cheap hydrometer or thermometer that is inaccurate or hard to read, will spoil your home brewing experience. Our Home Brewery features the best quality equipment available; equipment we have selected because it is the most satisfying to use over the long term. The included 40 quart BrewKettle" features a transfer valve to make make fermenter filling easy, and the included Wort Chiller will chill your hot wort (unfermented beer) down to yeast pitching temperature in less than 30 minutes (it features a garden hose female threaded cooling water connection).

Included is our unique Siphonless Fermenter, which features an invert tube transfer valve that keeps beer and silty yeast sediment out of the valve during fermentation, and then acts like a siphon hose ideally placed just above the sediment when transferring. This eliminates siphoning, which can be messy and unsanitary, and prevents yeast sediment from being transferred to the Priming Tank. The included Priming Tank includes a bottling valve with tube attachment that again eliminates siphoning and makes bottling (or kegging) easy and fast. A 18" plastic stirring spoon is included to help you stir in the carbonating sugar. For the critical measurement which determines when the beer is ready to bottle, our handmade glass hydrometer features 1 degree calibrations for precise, easy to see readings, and includes a sample tube. For testing the temperature of the beer, a stainless steel dial thermometer is provided, which includes a calibration nut. To sanitize your equipment (vital to prevent sour beer), a dry sanitizer is included that will make up to 8 gallons of solution. To clean your bottles, our bottle brush is included.

Save Money

If you normally buy microbrews or imports, our Brewery will pay for itself after a few batches. If you usually purchase standard domestic beer but prefer a more robust beer (or just want to brew it yourself), our Brewery will produce the freshest, most flavorful beer possible at less than the cost of store-bought beers.

Our Home Brewery includes everything pictured above and the William's Home Brewing Kit listed in the description. After you brew a batch, you will be able to brew any of our William's Brewing Kits, or make your own recipe following the guidelines in the included Home Beermaking book and beginner's video.

1. The first step in brewing is to open your William’s Brewing Kit and remove the liquid yeast pack. Set the pack on a hard surface and break its inner nutrient pouch, by hitting the pouch squarely with the palm of your hand. Although more costly than dry yeast, 175 ml of liquid yeast is used in most William’s Kits to produce a cleaner flavor.

2. When the liquid yeast pack is swollen (usually in 1 to 3 days after breaking the inner seal), boil the malt and fresh hops with at 6 gallons of water for 1 hour to blend and flavor the beer in the included 32 quart (8 gallon) BrewKettle". Unlike some hop extract-flavored canned kits, boiling is necessary to completely sanitize the wort (reducing the chance of spoiled beer) and blend the flavors of the included hops and malt.

3. After boiling, the finished wort (brewers term for unfermented beer) is cooled with the included William's Wort Chiller and poured off its sediment into the Siphonless Fermenter, where the liquid yeast is mixed in and bubbling fermentation begins in 1 to 3 days. To use the included Wort Chiller, you will need to attach the Wort Chiller inlet hose to a male garden hose connection, and let the Wort Chiller outlet hose drain into a sink or other area. Chilling with a wort chiller generally takes 15 to 20 minutes depending on your tap water temperature. Fermentation usually lasts 16 days before the beer is ready to bottle.

4. After fermentation has ended in about 12 days, the raw beer is transferred into the Priming Tank, where the corn sugar is stirred in to provide food for the yeast to produce carbonation. This is done in the Priming Tank rather than in the Siphonless Fermenter, to avoid stirring up the silty yeast sediment. With a William’s Home Brewery, there is never a need to siphon beer (siphoning can be an unsanitary mess), as the unique Siphonless Fermenter with its invert tube valve keeps the valve body dry during fermentation, which prevents silt-like yeast sediment from forming inside the valve. Then, when the valve is opened, the invert tube valve acts like a siphon hose ideally placed just above the yeast sediment on the fermenter floor when the beer is being transferred.

5. After mixing in the carbonating sugar in the Priming Tank, the beer is bottled or kegged. Five gallons of beer (as produced by all William’s Kits) requires about 48 twelve ounce bottles or equivalent draft system. After bottling, beer is aged two weeks or longer before drinking. Ale-style beers (which include Porter, Stout, and Wheat beer styles) require less aging than lagers, and are highly recommended for the first time brewer.

Showing 1 - 5 of 7 Reviews:

Awesome kit, contains everything you need to get started including a quite informative easy to follow video. I especially like the siphon less design of the fermentor.

by jackon 1/22/2012

complete kit

This is my first year of home brewing and I only have about 8 batches under my belt. I bought this outfit on a recommendation from a co-worker who has been brewing for about 5 years. I have used this kit for every batch I have brewed so far.
I found the kit to be very complete with everything needed to get the job done. The spigots in the fermenting and priming pails are an excellent and useful design.
When my son decided to start brewing I bought him the basic kit as I already had the things from this kit that the basic kit lacks.
There will be other things you will want to buy as you start and continue brewing whether a burner, a specific type of sanitizer, refractometer and all the other necessary or nice-to-have things depending on if you continue with extract brewing or progress to partial or all-grain. However, with this kit you will not have to get any of those things until you are ready for them.

by Eric (a different one)on 1/21/2012

Solid Equipment and Good Beer

This is a great kit as far as the equipment goes. I bought this for my first batch, and have discovered that the kettle (8 gal) is large enough to do a full boil, which is great, and the transfer valve works like a charm. The fermenting and priming buckets are high-quality, and it's good to have two for future batches when you want to rack to a secondary. I just finished my second batch and didn't siphon at all--the valves work very well. The guy at my homebrew store expresses some concern that the valves might be difficult to keep clean and to sanitize, so I'll have to see what happens with them over time. Wort chiller is a great investment. I will probably upgrade the hand capper to a stand capper at some point, but otherwise I see myself using all this equipment for a long time.
The IPA is a good beer. It's not really hoppy enough to be an IPA, but it's a solid pale ale with some nice malt and subtle hops, and a great first beer. The ingredients are quality and easy to use.

by Ericon 5/19/2011

Excellent Bew Kit

Excellent product for the first-time brewer. The bag of malt was a little clumsy to work with and I ended up with a bit of a mess, but for my second batch I left the malt bag on the kitchen counter overnight to warm up slightly and had no problems.
One thing that would make it better is a longer thermometer. With the size of the brew kettle and the amount of water used during the boiling, the thermometer doesn't reach the water when used with the clip provided. I've had to hold the thermometer in the water during cooling with the wort chiller (a definite need and worth the added cost). Not a major problem, just something that could be addressed.